The Swat That Never Was, or, the Power of the Double Nintendo

Wedged between two auspicious dates even darker than the 19th, Hitler’s birthday (20th) and Lenin’s birthday (22nd), I’m going to propose a toast to a small mission-accomplished for our side, thanks to Bernard Chumm, among others, and a reminder to you here at RedState of a great power you have you may not be aware of, which figures prominently in our propaganda wars with the Left.

On Sunday, EE posted a piece about White House complicity in an astroturf project. This is puzzling and Bernie’s studying it now as we’ve known Soros-funded leftists to be doing this sort of thing for years, without ever leaving a single fingerprint. Agitprop, infiltration, insider scoops, close encounters, they’ve never once tipped their hand. In fact, it was the speed of the Haditha story, which broke on the internet as a “murder-massacre” more quickly than the far more benign Time Magazine lead-story made its way to the newsstands, that got Bernie interested in how they coordinate the way do. He insists they left a trail. (If he finds it, you’ll never know.) But, now suddenly, the conservative media is chattering about Cass Sunstein’s ham-fisted little astroturf games, linking all sorts of fund sites that quite frankly would just as soon not be publicly linked. Either Soros’-hired pros just backed off and let the slow-witted amateurs have their go at it, or something else is afoot, possibly that there’s less reason to sneak. We’re not sure, yet. But the game is quickening. At some point they will have to come out and drop the secret handshakes and whispered greetings and start acting authoritarian, with an edge.

But in one small area, Bernie & Friends leveled the playing field, possibly making them declare themselves a little before they want to.

The Swat That Never Was

We’ve been complaining for about two years asking why our side wasn’t doing anything comparable to what the Left does with the internet. Well, around February Bernie and some other internet chumms decided to do something about it by laying false leads out there about an increase in right wing volatility. This belief has always been out there among the Left, anyway, so this was more or less a broadcasting of seeds over already-tilled soil. What they did was fill the air, both directed at and from inside some leftwing blogs and websites, with chatter about raising the temperature, if you know what I mean, leading into the April 15 national tax protests. Then let nature take its course. With some intervening events, such as the Health Care vote, things rolled out a little quicker than they’d planned, but it worked, and they never left a single fingerprint, which is why I can report it here now. For you see, nothing can be done about it. It cannot be undone. That’s the win.

They had two operating suppositions, both of which proved to be true. 1) If you make the Left believe you are about to raise the ante (with them everything is a conspiracy, especially the Tea Parties) that may involve physical confrontations (violence) they will try to preempt or match it, on the grounded belief they can always throw the blame back onto us for starting it (a common defense among children), and/or 2) they can establish a loud, aggressive presence near our gatherings, not as a deterrent but as a provocation, under the assumption that we are already sitting on a powder keg just about to explode…and by bringing the press to bear witness. Oops!

As you’ve witnessed since the Health Care vote, there has been a concerted effort to portray Tea Parties as standing athwart that very powder keg. Much of this is just plain paranoia. But it is also, as many have pointed out here, a “ploughing the row” for things to come. Setting the stage. And as I just said, Bernie’s been fanning those flames as well. This was part of his finesse (vt, as used in bridge).

But what has really been reinforcing those fans over the fire has been the use of “double nintendos” by our side. (I got that term from my son, and his tale of a date at a college mixer 20 years ago. Certifiably blonde, and a beer over her limit, she took umbrage at the “sexual and double ninetendos” some of the guys were making in her direction. Ah, to be 19 and drinking beer underage again!). Well, seems we all do it, only those on the Left, even up the line into management, don’t quite know how to handle our use of “double nintendos” as when we say “the fight”, “the war”, “revolt”, and talk of harsh justice. i.e, “hanging” “gallows”. To you they may be figures of speech, but for many on the Left, paranoid, but also a little fearful, some take those words seriously, and want the rest of the world to do so as well, thinking our excess in language is a propaganda feast for them. For Bernie, this is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Bernie called me after his trip to Boston and asked me to “drop a few bread crumbs to the witch’s house” by including in my diaries some of that incendiary language of righteous retribution which he knew many on the Left would take as overt threats. Other than my recommended use of The Swat, the old person’s terror weapon-of-choice, the rolled up newspaper, which I do carry and will use, I can’t think of any overt threat by myself or any member of RedState, but there have been dozens of you here who have joined in to my diaries (not to mention many others I read) and used the double-nintendo to its maximum potential, and with such gleeful malice. I salute you.

In any case, what happened is what Bernie thought would happen. There have been a few isolated incidents of violence propagated by the Left, largely under-reported, but mostly they hung around the periphery of our gatherings, trying to bait us into a fight. Why they lost is because all those fine decent folks out there protesting the greatest evil to descend on free men since Robespierre, did nothing of the sort. And they invited the press to record their victimization, only to record instead our good nature. For shock therapy, you can’t ask for a better side by side comparison. So what they lost was some of that press, and other cultural observers. The media is not totally a monolith, and the people they send out into the field…especially since they are now spread so thin…are not incapable of critical thought. They know what they see. And what they saw were nice people, making a joyful noise at the Debbil…right in his face. Now, they may not have recognized Ol’ Clootie for who he really is, but they did recognize good spirits and nice manners, and the kind of people who clean up after themselves. So in the end, what they also lost were many of the center-left commentators and talking heads, summed up best by David (Rodham) Gergen, who saw “no racism” among these people. (That’s as big as getting an Anglican to admit that Christ really could walk on water.)

This was not a big, headline victory, but just as you cannot cheat one, neither can you finesse an honest man. And they have been finessed. But it did expose them to people they’d just as soon not be exposed to (right now), and stripped away some of the facade, exposing that orc-like armor underneath which takes on a bluish glow when within a hundred feet of a God-fearing conservative. It also let them know we know, and this may cause them to come out into the open sooner than planned, which Bernie thinks is key.

The Embedded Power of RedState

I’m writing this for another reason as well. I want you to know the power you collectively have on RedState. It is a kind of power not enjoyed even by many talk show hosts, or the best political writers in the country. I call it the power of the embed. We not only talk to one another here but also to a much larger group of watchers, many of whom never even register, post or comment at RedState. They are both of the Left and from our side, and often what we write here is directed at them. They are taking notes, and from those notes, assessments are made. Some take what we say here, “bird track marks, and carry them to people far way and those people will know what is in our hearts.” (Johnny Cash, Talking Leaves).

We’ve always known the Left is watching, although I doubt we know how they process and analyze the information they gather here. Congress members, or more specifically their aides, also peek in. The RNC and DNC as well, as do a lot of NGO’s of all philosophical and political stripes. Bernie and others in his circle watch the DailyCuss in much the same way, as well as number of regional puppet-handling sites. They have embeds everywhere.

But some look in not to so much for what I may write, or any other regular diarists and front page writers here, but about what others say about what we say. The Comments. That’s where you pick up the tone or real gist of a diary. That’s what Bernie was betting on, and he was right, to the extent such things can be measured. That’s where the double nintendos were to be found.

You can go to any Leftie site, I suggest DailyCuss for all of you, which is not unlike a trip down any back alley in Brooklyn in the 1930s, when they were lined with privies. Pure stench. But for the Left visiting our haunts can be more dangerous as only the most hardened and trained individual is encouraged to read down to the Comments at Redstate. It’s sort of like the NKVD sending only their coldest Marxists into deep cover in the US. An ordinary party member would burn his card and start selling franks at Coney Island within a fortnight. The reason is simple, you post imagery and sentiments here they don’t have and can’t even contemplate on their sites. Go to Cuss and try to find someone who can speak about “hating” with the same passion Lady Penguin can speak of the flip side of that notion. There is no Chesterton or Lewis or Sowell of the Left. They have only condescension and disdain. For similar screeds you have to look to the 1890s and the hate-language from the “New” (Jim Crow) South, which worked its way down to little towns and villages in the form of a pencil-head inside a white robe. As many reporters found out last week in Tea Party rallies, you cannot visit RedState without having your powers of critical thinking tested. Like a baboon to Mozart’s Clarinet concerto, the response is universal when some people read words of reason and logic, or love of our fellow man, and compassion, simply offered….all on a site purportedly dedicated to racism and cruelty. Like the baboon, these are universal sentiments they may have never heard, but still recognize, and are cowed by it. It frightens them, and confuses them. But still they are attracted. Well, some of them. Whatever the preconceived notions, the pieces never quite seem to fit with the reality.

As always, we simply have tools and armaments they don’t have. That’s (y)our power.

The Swat That Never Was, Redux

If this all sounds like classic Alinsky, well maybe, but in fact, the Brits pulled off an operation against the Nazis in 1943, called “Mincemeat” which had them looking in all the wrong places for a coming invasion. So don’t carry the Commie admiration too far. We’ve always been good at this…when a wahr’s on.

So with a glass held high, I toast my sneaky friends in Oregon for an ops well done, and my friends at RedState for helping make it happen. You proved some very important things that cannot be undone, and which will bear seeds and grow. Now, tip one to yourselves.